Carrack shows you can just rock on... and on

Middle-aged musician Paul Carrack tours at mid-sized venues in the regions,
more than likely goes down a storm and moves on without fuss, writes Mark
Hudson.

Encore: Carrack on stage

By Mark Hudson

4:04PM BST 15 Oct 2012

Somewhere I’ve got an unpublished and, I dare say, unpublishable novel which foundered for the principal reason that I couldn’t find a convincing new career for the leading character, a middle-aged former rock musician.

What, I struggled to imagine, do those people – and there must be thousands of them out there – actually do when they’ve been up there on mega-stages (even in the role of a bass player like my character), constantly subjected to every form of bonkersness and loucheness, and have reached the age when endless gigging and nights of excess are surely no longer appropriate or physically supportable?

Having tried him out as graphic design lecturer, self-employed furniture maker and second-hand book dealer, I put my grumpy, discontented ex-rocker back in the drawer.

But the answer to what he might have done was provided by Friday’s BBC4 documentary on Paul Carrack, the former Ace and Mike & the Mechanics singer. It is: more rock music.

This decent, friendly 61-year-old from Sheffield with a great soul voice shows that rock’n’roll doesn’t have to be a trail of lunacy, but can be pursued as a mild-mannered, life-long job like any other.

Carrack turns up to gigs, generally at mid-sized venues in the regions, more than likely goes down a storm and moves on without fuss.

He is admittedly so painfully ordinary you wouldn’t notice him if he came to mend your roof. But in a profession in which life expectancy is very often frighteningly short, ordinariness has a lot to recommend it.